Ken

After months of anticipation, our EnVision remodel is underway. The first demolition crew arrived on August 30 and work has begun. As they say in construction (I'm learning new things all the time), now the fun begins! Dan Hettinger, who directs our congregational care at Mountainview, sent out the following email to our prayer team. I'm passing it along so you can join us in praying for God's kingdom to be expanded through these efforts. ********** 52 Days of Prayer for the EnVision Construction Good afternoon! Today is Day 1. It feels different here at church. There are new faces of the construction crew and the downstairs is an exciting mess getting ready for an amazing transformation. Would you, as a member of the prayer team, commit to pray every day for our church during this construction project, starting today? Nehemiah led one of the most remarkable construction projects ever.…

4:17 pm, Sunday, July 20, 1969 People gathered around their television or watched through a store window. What were they watching? The moon landing. September 12, 1962 It was on this date that President John F. Kennedy spoke at Rice University regarding the goal of sending a person to the moon: “But why, some say, the Moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and…

On any given weekend at Mountainview, we have many different types of people. Young and old, black and white, people who love bluegrass and those who don’t know better. In the same room, we have the decided and the undecided. We have people who have said yes to Jesus and those who have given him an outright no. We have more than a few maybe's in the crowd. That’s one of the things I love the most about our church. That’s why I want to be upfront about this post: I’m talking primarily to the decided – to those who are living the baptized life. Our mission as a church is to help you become better at the Great Commission, the call of Jesus to go into the world and make disciples. We all have friends, neighbors, co-workers and family members that we would love to see have a relationship with Jesus.…

The following article/parable was first published in 1979 in Ministry magazine. I came across it as I was working on an upcoming message on evangelism. It was written by John Drescher, who at that time was the pastor of the Scottdale Mennonite church in Scottdale, Pennsylvania. I'm passing it along to you in its entirety. ********** Now it came to pass that a group existed who called themselves fishermen. And lo, there were many fish in the waters all around. In fact the whole area was surrounded by streams and lakes filled with fish. And the fish were hungry. Week after week, month after month, and year after year these, who called themselves fishermen, met in meetings and talked about their call to fish, the abundance of fish, and how they might go about fishing. Year after year they carefully defined what fishing means, defended fishing as an occupation, and…